Pinnacle Event (7 page)

He had chosen the caf
é
so that he would be close to his next meeting, but it took Ray Bowman another fifteen minutes to get the check and leave the caf
é
. He had to hurry through the rain to his appointment two blocks down the narrow Herrengasse in the Palais Modena, the two-hundred-year-old headquarters of the Bundesministerium f
ü
r Inneres, the BM.I, Austria's secret police.

 

5

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19

PALAIS MODENA

VIENNA, AUSTRIA

After showing a passport to the guard at the front door, he was escorted upstairs to the office of Gunter Rosch, Deputy Director of the BVT, the Bundesamt f
ü
r Verfassungsschutz und Terrorismusbek
ä
mpfung, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism. Apparently the Austrians thought those were two distinct missions, but close enough for one agency to handle.

Rosch's office had been a salon when the Modenese Duke lived in the Palais. The ceiling was twenty-two feet high and decorated in a rococo style. The computer terminal on the Deputy Director's desk seemed incongruous, like a visitor from the twenty-first-century future appearing in the middle of a nineteenth-century present. “Great to see you, Ray. Welcome back to Vienna” Rosch boomed as he crossed the large expanse of his office. “I am told you are here as a tourist and I should not tell your embassy on Boltzmanngasse that you are in town. Special project or something?”

“I didn't tell the U.S. Embassy that I was coming,” Ray said, shaking the firm hand of the tall, broad Austrian. “It's kind of an off the books project.” Herr Rosch guided him to two oversized wingback chairs by a working fireplace. “That warmth feels good on a wet autumn day,” Ray continued. “I am afraid Gunter that I can't tell you a lot about why I am asking the questions I have, except to say that they could be related to saving a lot of lives.”

“Raymond, I trust you. Our relationship has been tested. With all of the investigation of the U.S. drone strike on the terrorists here in Vienna, it never came out that we had tipped you to their presence,” Rosch recalled. “And it never came out that we suggested that you might want to act unilaterally, since our laws did not permit us to do anything.”

“It was a bit messy,” Ray admitted, “but I do still believe that we prevented bombings on your subway and on U-Bahns in Germany.” A white-coated young man entered the room with two small silver trays, each with a glass of water and a cup of the thick sludge that the Viennese think of as coffee. Ray paused in his conversation.

“Don't mind Konrad. He is a sworn officer, indeed an armed officer, whose real job is to provide protection to my office suite and the Director's,” Rosch explained. “In the unlikely event that the Ottomans or the Mogul come back and get through our first three lines of defense.”

Bowman sipped briefly at the sludge and quickly returned the cup to the silver tray. “Karl Potgeiter, a retired IAEA inspector, still consulting with them, died in a car crash in Grinzing last August. He was originally from South Africa. I wonder if you had a file on him, and if the crash was investigated as possibly more than an accident.”

Rosch turned to the armed waiter who was about to leave the office. “Konrad, please go to my computer and pull up the file on this Potgeiter for us.” Rosch clearly trusted the young waiter and aide-de-camp. “While we are waiting, Ray, I must tell you that I was impressed at who arranged this meeting for you. Not every Caribbean beach bum has the White House as his concierge.”

“Here it is Herr Rosch,” Konrad called out from the other side of the room. “Shall I summarize?”

“Bitte,
Konrad,
ja.”

“South African nuclear physicist, worked for the IAEA. Suspected of prior involvement in the Apartheid regime and its nuclear bomb program. Lived in Grinzing. Wife deceased in 2013. Son lived nearby. No suspicious reports or inquiries about either man,” Konrad read out.

“And his death?” Ray asked.

“Traffic fatality. Erratic driving. Collided with a tram. Tram driver cleared of any wrongdoing.”

“You think there is more?” Rosch asked, looking over his glasses at Bowman.

“We think he was involved in a South African expat organization called the Trustees that controlled large sums of money,” Bowman replied. “I am also slightly suspicious of the reason for the erratic driving. It would not be the first BMW to have been hacked. Could I perhaps see the accident investigation report. And maybe talk with the son?”

“Well, I could ask the Wien Polizei for their traffic investigation. That may take a day to get here.” Rosch rose from the armchair and went to read the computer screen that his aide had called up. “Meanwhile, perhaps Konrad could help you find the son.” As he neared his desk, one of the telephones on it rang. Rosch listened to the caller for a minute, thanked him, and hung up.

“Well Raymond, you may not have wanted the American Embassy to know that you are here, but you seemed to have failed in that regard.”

“How is that?” Bowman asked, stepping away from the warmth of the fire.

“Seems you were followed here by a team of three young men from Boltzmanngasse. Perhaps it's just a training exercise for your CIA friends.”

Ray laughed aloud. “Gunter, the only way you would know that is if your guys were doing countersurveillance on me.”

Rosch spread his arms out, the palms of his big hands showing. “Raymond, naturally we are giving you the services we afford our friends. Would not want some al Qaeda fellow pushing you in front of one of our trams.” He turned the computer screen so that the American could see what he had been scanning. Bowman's German was insufficient for the electronic file to have much significance to him. “I notice, Raymond, you did not ask me to help you get access to his bank accounts with these vast sums of money. I trust you have already accessed them in some way, without, of course, violating the Austrian Bank Secrecy Law.”

Ray Bowman smiled at his colleague. “I would not want to burden you with too many requests, Gunter.”

“Well then, Konrad, this is a chance for you to get back on the street. Take a car and go find the son, this Johann Potgeiter. Be polite about it, but get him to talk.”

 

6

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19

GRINZING

VIENNA, AUSTRIA

“The crash was just there,” Konrad Voltke pointed. “Potgeiter was coming down the street into the city, as was the trolley. He sped up to pass the trolley and turned right in front of it, attempting to get into Daringergasse, but he was not far enough in front of the number 38 and it hit him when he turned. The tram driver did not have time to stop. The car exploded and burned poor Herr Potgeiter beyond all recognition. The file says they did the identification with dental records.”

They were sitting in one of BM.I's many, blue BMWs, a five series. “Why would Potgeiter want to turn into that street? Where does it go? Where was he going?” Bowman asked his young driver.

“It's a residential street, nothing special,” Konrad replied. “Herr Potgeiter was driving into the Innenstadt for his morning coffee and newspaper read, as was his custom, at least that's what the accident investigation report says. I called a friend in the Polizei and he read it to me. The actual file will show up tomorrow morning.”

“So, why veer right into Daringergasse?”

“Why indeed? You think he was drugged, perhaps, Herr Bowman?”

“No, Herr Voltke, I think he was hacked, or rather, his car was.”

As they drove up the Grinzinger Alle into the little town, Bowman scanned the BM.I police file on the dead man's son, Johann. From what he could discern from the German language report, the son of the late South African physicist was forty-two and had become an Austrian citizen. He worked as a financial analyst and investor in the private equity arm of an old Viennese bank. Speaks English. Married to an Austrian woman, he has three daughters. Since his father's death, they had moved a few streets over into the father's larger house, the house Johann had grown up in. There was nothing suspicious about him. Nonetheless, the BM.I had a file on him. Some habits die hard, Bowman thought as they entered the square.

The Potgeiter house looked modern, white, with a lot of glass. A man who could be Johann was taking grocery bags from the back of a Volvo station wagon in the garage, as the BVT car pulled up. “Herr Potgeiter?” Konrad called out as he and Bowman walked up the short driveway. “Konrad Voltke, Federal Interior Ministry.”

“Oh, no, not about the taxes again?” Potgeiter replied.

“No, we are here about a request from the American government. Herr Thomas here is with their Treasury Department. We would like to talk with you about some funds that transferred through American banks.”

“It's a routine money laundering investigation, but you are not the target or under suspicion,” Ray Bowman said, showing his identification as Harold Thomas. “We just need your help.” Johann Potgeiter showed them into the house.

The three men settled around a table in the informal dining area off the kitchen. The picture window looked up at the vineyards on the hill behind the house. In a city of small apartments, this was a spacious home. California style, Johann called it. He spoke in German-accented English.

“When my father died, I took over managing many of the accounts he ran as a favor to his friends from the old days. Many of South African expats trusted him to manage their money and he did very well for them, I must say,” Johann said. “Naturally, I didn't ask them where their money came from. I assume they liquidated their land and such in the old country in time, before the land values crashed after the takeover. Such crime there now, nobody wants to own things there.”

“Except gold and diamonds, of course,” Ray added.

“Yes, stocks in the mines are still doing well, but the rest? Such destruction of value there has been in the country of my birth. They were not prepared to govern and they have driven so many of the good people overseas. Like my father, like me.”

“So you don't know where the funds came from, except that they were from friends of your dad's?” Ray asked. “Just before he died, your father received a series of deposits totaling five hundred million dollars in a few days' time. Do you know about that?”

Johann Potgeiter shook his head. He seemed a typical upper-middle-class Viennese, but he was being unusually cooperative with two men who had just appeared on his driveway. “To tell the truth, while he picked good investments, he kept bad records. I don't really know too well what happened before he died.”

Konrad Voltke looked at Ray Bowman in a way that suggested that there was not too much point in pressing the issue with Johann, at least not now. Bowman nodded his head, indicating that Konrad should pick up the questioning.

“About his death, I'm sorry to bring you back to that day, but did you talk with him that morning,” Konrad asked in perfect English.

“No, unfortunately. Usually we would speak in the evenings. I had talked to him the night before and he was in good spirits. Naturally, I have been over all of this with the Polizei.”

“And do you know why he was turning into the street, the Daringergasse?” Konrad inqired.

Johann Potgeiter stared out and up at the vineyards. “I have wondered that so many times. So many times because I have to drive that way so often, past the spot.” He turned back to Konrad Voltke. “My conclusion is that he forgot something at home and was going to turn around. He could be so focused in thought sometimes that he would not notice the world around him. That's why we never had him babysit with our girls. They are hard enough for us to handle.”

Bowman wondered to what degree Johann Potgeiter's answers were rehearsed, or at least thought out, not spontaneous. Had the son of the late nuclear bomb maker been waiting for a visit like this from the authorities? Bowman knew he needed to change the tempo of the discussion.

“Your father was a member of the Trustees, a cabal of the leaders of the former South African defense industrial complex. So, have you replaced him in that role? Are you coordinating your investment decisions with those of the other Trustees who also each got a half billion dollars days before your father died?”

Potgeiter did not blink. “I am not a Trustee of anything, Herr Thomas. And no one tells me how to invest.” His demeanor did not change. “And, as I said, I don't really know about funds that moved around before my father died.”

Bowman tried again. “Johann, if you knew that your father was murdered, that the controls for his car were hacked and he was driven into the oncoming tram, that he did not drive himself into it, would you want to find out who did that to him?”

Johann Potgeiter was silent for a moment, a blank look on his face. He turned to the Austrian security man. “Is that what happened, Herr Voltke?” There was still no emotion.

Konrad Voltke was caught off guard, first by Bowman's line of attack and then by Potgeiter's question to him. “The Polizei's official conclusion is that it was a traffic accident, but we, ah, we wondered if you accepted that?”

“I have no reason not to accept what the Polizei told me. Unless there is some new information. Is there, Herr Thomas? Does the U.S. Treasury Department know something that the Polizei missed?” He pronounced the words U.S. Treasury Department in a tone that almost implied he thought his houseguest was perhaps from some other part of the American government.

“We are always suspicious when billions of dollars slosh around in strange channels and then people die, Herr Potgeiter,” Bowman said rising from the table. “If you should be contacted by the Trustees, please do let us know. Thank you for your time.”